Thus peopleso it seems to me
Become good friends from sheer ennui.
14
But even friendships like our heroes
' Exist no more; for we've outgrown
All sentiments and deem men zeros
Except of course ourselves alone.
We all take on Napoleon's features,
And millions of our fellow creatures
Are nothing more to us than tools . . . Since feelings are for freaks and fools.
Eugene, of course, had keen perceptions
And on the whole despised mankind,
Yet wasn't, like so many, blind;
And since each rule permits exceptions,
He did respect a noble few,
And, cold himself, gave warmth its due.
15
He smiled at Lensky's conversation.
Indeed the poet's fervent speech,
His gaze of constant inspiration,
His mind, still vacillant in reach
All these were new and unexpected,
And so, for once, Eugene elected
To keep his wicked tongue in check,
And thought: What foolishness to wreck
The young man's blissful, brief infection;
Its time will pass without my knife,
So let him meanwhile live his life Believing in the world's perfection;
Let's grant to fevered youthful days
Their youthful ravings and their blaze.
16
The two found everything a basis
For argument or food for thought:
The covenants of bygone races,
The fruits that learned science brought,
The prejudice that haunts all history,
The grave's eternal, fateful mystery,
And Good and Evil, Life and Fate
On each in turn they'd ruminate.
The poet, lost in hot contention,
Would oft recite, his eyes ablaze,
Brief passages from Nordic lays;
Eugene, with friendly condescension,
Would listen with a look intense,
Although he seldom saw their sense.
17
More often, though, my two recluses
Would muse on passions* and their flights.
Eugene, who'd fled their wild abuses,
Regretted still his past delights
